


Go Find Some Trouble

by lackofpatience



Series: The Lion and the Thorn [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Infidelity, King Alistair and Mage Lavellan but it doesn't matter too much just yet, i guess?, porn THEN plot?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-05 11:17:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5373362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lackofpatience/pseuds/lackofpatience
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>All Cullen wants is to understand her.  That’s it, really.  And somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knows that this isn’t the way to do it, that he’s not really going to find answers in heated breaths or the slide of her fingers across sweat-slicked skin or whatever desperate mewling noises he can coax from her with his hands and body and mouth, but… well, after so many years, he’s simply out of other ideas.</i>
</p><p>Cullen and Surana cheating on their significant others, because I apparently hate happiness and must destroy it in all forms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Go Find Some Trouble

All Cullen wants is to understand her. That’s it, really. And somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knows that this isn’t the way to do it, that he’s not _really_ going to find answers in heated breaths or the slide of her fingers across sweat-slicked skin or whatever desperate mewling noises he can coax from her with his hands and body and mouth, but… well, after so many years, he’s simply out of other ideas. 

Alright, so ‘simply’ is probably the wrong word. There’s nothing simple about this. But it’s been so long, and they’re both so far removed from the people they were when he first tried understanding her that he wouldn’t even know where to _start_ now. Maybe this way is easier. Maybe he’s not meant to understand. Maybe he’s just a weak man straying from the woman he loves and looking for excuses. _Maybe_ he should stop thinking so bloody much and focus on getting off already as it’s been minutes since she came apart around him and not for the first time, stifling gasps and tensing muscles, and now he’s just fucking her raw as she stays wrapped around him, breathless and boneless and beautiful. 

Figuring that if he’s going to be so wrapped up in his own head that he can’t even fuck properly, Cullen might as well try to keep her engaged, he shifts his weight onto one hand and reaches between them with the other to get her going again only to draw his hand back like he’s been burned at the nearly pained noise she makes the instant his fingers so much as brush against her swollen sex. Okay, so maybe he’s been going for longer than he thought. He’s got no problem staying hard, and she feels _so_ damn good, hot and slick and so tight it’s like she’s been waiting just for him all these years, but nothing is _happening_ , no build or tension low in his gut, just a steady pressure that shows no signs of abating no matter how much or how hard he ruts up into her.

Nothing’s being _gained_ is the thought that jumps out at him, and his increasingly desperate mind cycles back around to what he really wants out of all this. To understand her. It’s not about the sex, it’s about _her_. And with her eyes closed from exhaustion, clinging weakly to him and just trying to ride things out… he gains nothing. And just like that, Cullen knows what he needs.

“Look at me,” he groans, low and rough with frustration and desire. She hesitates only a moment, but it’s a moment too long for the state he’s in and he slides his hand back down to rub roughly at her clit, ignoring her hiss of discomfort this time as his voice rises into a harsh whisper. “Look at me!”

There it is. She opens her eyes languidly, entirely at odds with the way her mouth twists and her nose scrunches at the ministrations of his fingers. There’s no hint in her gaze of the stubbornness her delay left him expecting. She just looks up at him, her wide grey eyes wide, wide open while she… Maker, he’s got the Hero of Ferelden _whimpering_ beneath him and the strange dissonance between expectation and reality floors him, twists him up inside in that not-entirely-pleasant way only she’s ever been able to pull off. At least it finally gets him where he needs to be.

He _forces_ another climax out of her, no finesse to his touch, only a firm pressure on overstimulated flesh in time with his increasingly shallow thrusts, his hips barely coming away from hers before he drives back in, and the sound she makes before he drops onto one elbow to cut it off with a palm clamped roughly over her mouth sounds more like a sob than anything else. He’s lost as she clenches around him, though, spending himself with an ugly, animalistic grunt that tears itself from his throat unbidden. It seems to last forever, and he’s forced to bury his face in the crook of her neck to muffle the ensuing moan as he rides it out, spilling every last ounce of energy he has into her along with his seed.

Cullen manages to keep most of his mass shifted onto the one elbow to avoid crushing her as he collapses under the weight of his own exertions and he can’t be certain, but he thinks he actually might have blacked out for a few seconds, because the next thing he’s aware of is a strange, unexpectedly wet sensation that it takes him a moment to place.

“Ack!” he exclaims, rolling off of her in a hurry before casting her an incredulous look. “Did you just lick my hand?”

“Oh, so _that_ grosses you out?” Neria replies, and bless her, she at least has the graces to laugh, which goes a long way toward helping him feel less ridiculous in the moment. “You weren’t letting go and I needed to _breathe_. Maker, Cullen, your hands are huge.”

“It did not gross m- I just wasn’t expecting that, is all,” he protests weakly, slumping back against the pillows and waiting for his heart rate to return to something a little more manageable before he figures out what is possibly supposed to come next. “And they’re not that big, are they?” he adds with a frown, holding one hand in front of his face. In the candlelight, he can see the shine where he’s still slick from her cunt.

Her only reply is to gently reach over and thread her fingers through his. Hers are long and slender (longer than Ellana’s, and _no_ , he cannot start comparing the two women now, best to cut that line of thought off straight away), but inescapably petite in this context. She drives the point home as she slowly brings their joined hands over to her, drawing his index finger into her mouth and sucking in a most obscene way. By the time she shifts her attentions to his thumb, it’s far too easy for those unnaturally dark lips of hers to have to stretch a bit to comfortably let her tongue lave fully around the digit. It can be so easy to forget their physical differences, her features being so nontraditionally elven, unlike those of- _stop that_. 

Fortunately, he’s still far too sated to get worked up by her attentions, a cloudy look in his eyes and his throat working a little harder than usual to swallow being the only (physical) indications of how she’s affecting him. “Right, point made, massive hands, thank you very much. As far as human women are concerned, they’re fine, all right?” Not that he’s defensive or anything.

“Mm-hmm,” Neria hums lightly, paying meticulous attention to each of his fingers in turn. “And when was the last time you had one of those?”

“That is absolutely none of your-” he starts, cutting himself off at the way she smirks around his fingers before he pulls his hand back in frustration.

“Cullen, relax. So you have a type, it’s not a big deal. I… clearly do, too, for what it’s worth.”

“I have… no idea what that’s worth.”

“Hey, speaking of former-slash-not-quite templars," she suddenly blurts out, a playful note to her voice as if that will somehow offset the subject matter, "that whole… crazy stamina thing you had going back there, is that a side effect of kicking lyrium or something? I have _never_ -”

“No,” Cullen cuts her off, shaking his head with a scoff. “That’s not… no.”

“Okay, good, because I was going to say, honestly not sure if that’d be a blessing or a curse. That’s just _you_ , then? Never would have guessed you had it in you, honestly.”

He opens his mouth to reply, but there’s really nothing to say, is there? It _isn’t_ him, is the thing. It’s _her_. It’s all her.

“Well, you won’t have to worry about it any more, because this isn’t something that can happen again,” he finally manages, forcing himself to sit up and turn away, casting about the room for his clothes. It’s a task that becomes monumentally more difficult, however, when she scoots over, sitting up on her knees to slip an arm around him and whisper in his ear, breasts pressing invitingly against his back.

“Says who?”

“Says _me_ ,” Cullen protests without pulling away from her grasp, a perfect picture of hypocritical righteousness. “You’ve tempted me up here once, and as…” For a moment, words fail him. “... _everything_ as all of this was, it was a mistake. I need to go.”

She sighs, but doesn’t stir, forcing him to sit ramrod-straight to keep from melting back into her embrace for what feels like an eternity. Finally, she presses a kiss to his shoulder, dry but warm, and relents.

“Fair enough,” is all she says, and in the moment, she sounds so sweetly sad that it takes every scrap of Cullen’s considerable self-control to stand up instead of turning right around and pinning her back down to the mattress of Skyhold’s nicest guest quarters with his mouth. Why is she here? Why him? Why now? Most importantly, why this all-consuming need of his to _understand_?

Turning back, he expects to be lost in her all over again, but there’s something in her expression as she sits back that gives him pause. Something that doesn’t harmonize quite right with the sadness he heard.

She isn’t done with him yet.

And now that he thinks for a moment, he already knew that before he saw it.

Maybe he’s getting somewhere with her, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Kinda phoned in the end there, but these idiots weren't leaving me alone and I have to be at work in six hours. Time frame is very shortly post-Corypheus. Names have been defaulted to protect the innocent.


End file.
